Do AS, ADHD, and other run in the family?

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that could be an explanation for my dad having issues with my mom before divorcing WAYYY back then. Then arguably there's other stuff too....

EDIT: no my dad is not diagnosed...though I wonder if he is one...I remember people saying I act similar to him or he said it or something in some ways....

EDIT 2: hmm..possibly an Uncle is that way...50 year old guy who uses Macs and kows technology, etc...again not diagnosed.

Remember, "Black Folk" don't have access to this stuff....lol.

You can't work out the percentages without knowing which is the dominant and recessive gene - and also how strong the genes are etc....

But, all being equal if a parent has 1 normal (X) and 1 aspie (Y) gene and the other parent has both normal (XX) then... the odds would be... 50% possibly affected.

If both parents are carriers, the odds increase to 25% guaranteed, 50% possible, 25% not affected.

Of course it's all theoretical and doesn't prove a thing.

Depression is what's known as a co-morbid condition.

It may be that your relatives simply had depression.

Or then again, it may be that your relatives were on the spectrum and struggled to cope with their daily lives and relationships as a result of their spectrum traits, and this manifested itself as depression. If they were diagnosed with depression, the doctors wouldn't necessarily have looked for underlying causes than, say, going through a divorce, being sacked or made redundant... depression would have been an expected response to those scenarios, so the doctor would simply have prescribed anti-depressants, and off you go.

Doctors wouldn't necessarily have looked into *why* the person had a series of failed relationships or ended up divorced, or why the person couldn't hold down a job. Your relatives might have simply been labelled depressed although there might have been deeper seated reasons, such as being on the spectrum.

It could be some kind of recessive/carrier gene.

For example, there are some deaf/Deaf parents who have deaf children, some have hearing children. They can have a mix.

Likewise, something like red hair. It can skip generations, I have an aunt and uncle who both have brown hair but all four of their children are red heads, from strawberry blonde through to dark auburn and bright ginger in between.

So you might get, say, two people whose families carry the gene, but randomly none of their family members have paired up with another carrier for the past couple of generations, so no one is aware of any issue in their family. And then a couple get together, each are carriers, and then they have a child that's affected and all of a sudden it seems to pop up out of nowhere.

There's also the issue of cystic fibrosis, for example, again the whole carrier thing. Two parents who are carriers might or might not have children with the condition, it's a bit like playing genetic russian roulette.

And then of course, on top of the issue of recessive genes, latency, carrier blah blah blah, there is the possibility of a random genetic mutation.

For example, I think Downs Syndrome is a random genetic mutation, an extra chromosome. I don't think that is hereditary (I'll stand corrected if I'm wrong).

Similarly, if you had two families with no spectrum history whatsoever and there was a random gene mutation involving the autistic spectrum gene(s), then it could start the trait in that family.

My mom is VERY As-ish...of the right-brained artsy variety....the black sheep of her family....Her mom was NT...i am pretty sure..beer-drinking, chain-smoking, televised golf watching...always very embarrased by me...I was the odd grandchild...My mom always would talk about the way her dad( who died when I was 2) was very introverted and mathematical and would not ever talk about anything...was described as possibly shellshocked from WWII...Her sisters are very NT, but both are or have been on antidepressants...her brother was affected by having been in Vietnam, and i recall him being a very sort of sad sensitive person. Her older sister's older son is sorta odd...a member of the Ayn Rnd Society...completely withderw from the rest of the family...I have not spoken to him in years.

um...

My dad's side is/was chock full of eccentric intelligent engineer/architecht/inventor types.
My grandfather and his brother were both very eccentric...especially his brother, who never married or was really able to function in "normal society"....There is one distant cousin on that side who is LFA...my younger cousin who is no longer with us might possibly have been aspie...he was obviously having difficulties...otherwise he would still be with us....there was something about his bluntness and escapist imagination that reminded me of myself...

um...my sister is pretty much NT...she didn't have the developmental difficulties I did, but she always had a certain level of ridgity to her....There is a very strong OCD/packrat vein on that side of the family...it has reached rediculous proportions at times...and my folks are packrats and animal hoarders.

My dad is of superior intelligence and is/was a speed reader with a huge collection of books...and a player of multiple instruments (same as my uncle)....he graduated from high school early...and all this other stuff....He was a draftsman when i was a kid and eventually went on to sell pianos....
There is a certain level of common sense that he seems to struggle with....a sort of gullability...and also he has a very difficult sense of direction...certain things I have read about in ADD books he seems to deal with...


I am only diagnosed with ADD, but I have exhibited AS traits all my life...to a certain degree...
I am of relatively average intelligence...though had the #1 scores in my elementary school on aptitude tests...um...I walk on my toes...have mild face blindness...can't tell left from right....have pretty severe executive dysfunctons....growing up i was often effected by motor issues....have been quite socially dysfuntonal..have struggled with sensory issues...obsessions....I have alternated betewwn extreme focus and extreme lack of focus...um....I can't drive a car..have difficulty holding a job....blah blah blah.....

..so to a degree...Whatever it is that I have.... seems to run in the family...

Different levels of the spectrum in the family ADD, Asperger's, and Autism.

I'm the only one in my family diagnosed with AS. Nobody has ADD. My father's father is suspected to have AS, that's all.

Apparently the only autistic in my family. Including wide family from my parents' grandparents onwards.

No mental conditions that are somehow associated with autism. No physical disorders or diseases either.

I'm so special hihi

Yeah, there are different forms of Down Syndrome.

The cause can be inherited in case of a translocation. If one parent already has a chromosome that accidentally carries at least part of a chromosome 21 and if that very chromosome is passed onto the child addtionally to the regular copy and the copy of the other parent, it'll have Down's. Kind of like 30 of Down's with a translocalised trisomy 21 have at least 1 parent that also carries a translocalised copy. (The parent doesn't have Down's because they don't have 3 chromosomes 21 but 1 chromosome just changed places.)

And of course 2 people with Down's will pass the syndrome depending on what cause of Down's they have.

It is not really a genetic mutation though.

It usually is (that's yet another cause) an accident in the course of cell division before the egg is fertilised (non-disjunction).

I have AS and I have one Autistic child and two that have yet to be diagnosed but show a lot of Aspie qualities. I know that my 16 year old is AS but not sure about my 6 year old. I have two NT children but one is Bi polar (runs in his fathers family) and the other has dyslexea but is otherwise normal, actually she is a serious social butterfly (where did that girl come from LOL). My mother scored as borderline Aspie on the Aspie Quiz. We believe that both my grandparents on my mothers side were and are AS (grandfather is dead). I have one auntie who is certainly AS. I have two brothers and both of them have many AS quailites but seem to function normally and dont seem to have any troubles with thier kids. My Autistic daughter and my 6 year old with AS qualities are from my current marriage. My first husband was bi polar and I have one Aspie from that marriage and one with bi polar disorder. My current husband I call the partial Aspie...he has a lot of traits but has far less social problems than I have. Its like he got all the positive good things that come with AS but hardly any of the negative ones.

im the only one i know with a diagnosed autism spectrum disorder (besides one cousin but he was adopted) but i do know that there are other issues in my family. for example on my dads side almost every female has sometype of anxiety disorder. also i have a cousin diagnosed with OCD.

On my moms side my uncle is possibly an aspie but who knows it could very well be PTSD my mom said he was never the same after coming back from the war in Vietnam.

My biological mother from what the orphanedge said had serious social and behavior problems, my half brother has adhd and i have autism, from what i see i think it does run in the family. My brother has obvious autistic traits, except he can socialize, he was delayed in socializing but thats where the adhd comes in. I also am pretty sure adhd runs in the family, i do however know that most parents who have the diagnosis of add or adhd are parents of autistic children as well.

Most likely it's on more than one gene. The wikipedia blurb says probably three or five, and that researchers have suggested as many as 100. Accounts for the spectrum-ness of it all. And explains why two NTs might have a severely autistic child (both are carrying lots of unexpressed recessive genes for autism) or why my family contains no autists but lots of people with autisic-traits (one or two autistic genes are expressed in many family members, but others aren't in the group's gene pool, or have just never been expressed.)

Most of my family (on my dad's side) seems to be somewhat AS.

One of my uncles is diagnosed, and I'm trying my hardest to turn out better than him. The others seem to be pretty well adjusted, except for my brother (who is not AS, but is a druggie/drunk), and to a lesser extent, my dad.

I haven't seen any other adult scream and jump on tables and intentionally cut himself to make a point about which direction the knives are put into a drawer and threaten to put people into a mental institution for getting angry and... dammit. My dad is just scary.


Depression also runs in the family. I have that too.

My brother has it, so do I.

There are traits on both sides of my family.(My mum flapped her hands when she was younger, my dad is very concrete and literal)

There are a few people that I've seen in old photographs that have the 'aspie eyes'. There are several cases on both sides of the family, really.